The present invention pertains to a photographic processor comprising a printing section for printing an image on photographic paper as a photosensitive material and a developing section for developing the image printed on the photographic paper.
Heretofore, it has been a customary practice, in the field of photographic processing, in case of obtaining a composite image in which a picture image on a film and a character image, such as a comment, on the picture image are jointly displayed, to optically print a picture image on a picture region of photographic paper while covering a character region of the photographic paper with a shield mask, then to optically print a character image on the photographic paper by placing a lithographic film carrying the character image, such as a comment, over the character region of the photosensitive material in a super-imposed manner while covering the picture region with a shield mask, and thereafter to develop the printed image.
In the optical photo processing system for obtaining a composite image of picture image and character image according to the above method, there were various problems such that it takes time to prepare a lithographic film for enabling printing of a character image and that a shield mask is necessary individually for covering the picture region and the character region, which makes it difficult to perform efficient printing of the composite image.
As a means for solving the above problem, there is proposed an idea of digitizing an image by reading a picture image and a character image by an image sensor such as a CCD and preparing a composite image in advance in which the digitized picture image and character image are combined so as to print the composite image on photographic paper. However, in such a digital processing system, a picture image on a film is required to be read by the image sensor even if a character image printing is not necessary, which bears another problem of lowering printing efficiency.
There is another idea of combining the optical photo processing system and the digital photo processing system such that the digital photo processing system is used when a composite image of picture image and character image is printed and the optical photo processing system is used when solely a picture image on a film is printed. The above arrangement of simply combining the optical photo processing system and the digital photo processing system would merely make the whole system large, which becomes another problem.
In view thereof, an object of this invention is to provide a photographic processing system that enables efficient printing of a composite image of picture image and character image without lowering printing efficiency even when solely a picture image on a film is to be printed yet with realizing a compact size of the system.